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FARM EFFICIENCY 



How It Depends on Efficient Equipment 
For Living 



XENOPHON CAVERNO 



77/ <r America7i farm is the basis of national safety as well as 
prosperity. To betray the American farmer, through avarice or 
ignorance, is treaso7i to the United States. 



Copyrighted 1916 

by 

Xenophon Cavertio 



<i%^ 



INTRODUCTION 

This pamphlet, wliich is a reprint from the "Transac- 
tions of The American Society of Agricultural Engineers" for 
1915, had its beginnings in a plan to use the ideas it con- 
tained as an introduction to a set of bulletins describing cer- 
tain mechanical equipment which I had designed and manu- 
factured to cover the field indicated by the title. 

While it was still in the formative state I began sending 
it out in response to the almost continuous calls for informa- 
tion along this line which come from agricultural colleges, 
extension departments, and various other agencies, which are 
trying to help establish better farm methods. This policy re- 
sulted in a great deal of correspondence and many personal 
interviews and in a continuous enlargement of the scope of 
the paper. 

In the spring of 1915 I presented the subject to the Coun- 
ty Agricultural Advisors of the State of North Dakota at their 
annual convention at Fargo, and in the following summer to 
the students at the Summer School of Agriculture at the Uni- 
versity of Wisconsin. The questions asked at these meetings 
and the discussions aroused resulted in still more additions 
to the sul^jects covered and to the gradual beating of the ma- 
terial into its present shape. 

Very early in this process I became convinced that there 
was a great dearth of knowledge in this particular line and 
that more or less by accident I had gone through a training 
and experience which fitted me to fill the gap. Hence the cut- 
ting out of everything that might cast the shadow of com- 
mercialism over the material itself or the method of putting 
it. into circulation. 

As I cannot go everywhere and preach the gospel of bet- 
ter farm living, I have tried to put the conclusions resulting 
from my experiences along this line into the form of a sug- 
gestive outline, each paragraph of which might be elaborated 
by teachers and extension lecturers to almost any extent. 
This course has its dangers, however. In my efforts to treat 
the subject on a non-commercial basis I have been vague and 
general in some of my mechanical suggestions ; and vague- 



ness and generality are the bane of a good deal of our agricul- 
tural teaching. In this paper I am trying to avoid controversy 
on technical points and to focus attention on the importance 
of the subject and the possibilities it opens up. There is a 
reason based on experience back of every practical sugges- 
tion of what to do and what not to do, what to select and 
what to avoid. 

This pamphlet is not going to farmers or other possible 
purchasers of equipment. It is going to teachers in agricul- 
tural colleges, experiment station and extension workers, agri- 
cultural advisors, editors of farm papers, and others directly 
and professionally responsible for the shaping of the broad 
lines of agricultural policy; also to bankers and the various 
commercial, religious, and philanthropic organizations which 
are trying to help the nation bv helping farming and farm 
living. 

For this reason I can speak plainly in this introduction 
about some of the frauds and abuses of which the farmer is 
the victim. I have attempted to do this to the farmer himself 
in catalogues, in advertising, and in letters, only to find the 
people against whom my criticisms were leveled coolly copy- 
ing my words down to typographical errors. And because 
there was no higher authority or standard for the farmer to 
appeal to or for me to appeal to, the frank statement of the 
truth for the protection of the farmer appeared to be merely 
one side of an undignified squabble between rivals in busi- 
ness. 

It is because the people to whom this pamphlet goes can 
do what the farmer cannot do — investigate and find out the 
truth — and because it is their duty to do so, that I call at- 
tention to certain abuses which they are in a position to cor- 
rect; but before doing so I want to make a frank statement 
of my own experience and my personal or commercial inter- 
est along this line so I can be credited for my experience and 
discounted for my interests. In doing this I shall take the 
indirect method to get rid of as many personal pronouns as 
possible. 

Suppose you wanted to endow a department of research 
in this line ; how better you train a man than this : 

1st — Give him a course in Mechanical Engineering. 

2nd — Give him three years in a machine shop as machin- 
ist, draughtsman, and machine designer. 



3rd — Give him fifteen years in charge of a public utility 
plant and let him design and construct a complete gas plant, 
electric light and power plant, central steam heating plant, ice 
plant, and water supply plant, and plan and execute a cam- 
paign to adapt the service of these utilities to all the needs of 
the community. 

4th — Give him ten years in plumbing and heating con- 
tracting and make him take the state examination for master 
plumbers. 

5th — Give him a couple of hundred thousand dollars to 
spend over a term of eight years in advertising to country 
people for their farm water supply and mechanical and sani- 
tary problems. Let him cull the market for all types of ma- 
chinery it affords along this line, select the best, sell them as 
part of a complete guaranteed system, and stand good for all 
kicks and failures whether they are due to the faults of the 
machines or to the mechanical limitations of average country 
people. 

While this process is going on as a successful business, 
let him start a machine shop and begin the manufacture of a 
limited line of equipment based on the successes and failures 
of existing market types. Let him change over from the 
others to his own as slowly as he pleases, because business is 
going on just the same and he can afford to test out each 
machine of his own design by the same rigid test of experi- 
ence that he has used as a foundation for his own work. 

Let him keep this up for eight more years, gradually 
covering the wdiole range of requirements for farm power 
and sanitation. 

6th — Give him eight years of farm experience, beginning 
in a cabin on raw "cut-over land" in a back-woods district 
with no expert help and no guide except farm papers, farmers' 
bulletins and the experience of neighboring farmers, and let 
him find out what the real farming problem is in this way, 
both without and with equipment for comfortable, healthful, 
and efticient working and living. 

7th — To keep him from getting an "in-growing mind" 
give him charge of the editorial policy of a daily paper for 
eight years. Being an advertiser he will have practically every 
magazine and farm paper in the country to go through and, 
consciously or unconsciously, he must hook up his own spe- 
cialized work and thinking with the social, economic, and 
political problems of the day. 



This would be the "laboratory method" of getting a 
foundation laid on facts, with the world for a laboratory and 
people instead of guinea pigs. 

It so happens that, more by accident than design, I have 
had just this laboratory experience, and from the point of 
vantage, which this evolutionary experience gives me, I can 
spot almost unerringly the types of equipment foredoomed 
to failure as they rise up out of nothing, have their brief day, 
and disappear — with the farmer's money. Like the mule, they 
have no pride of ancestry and no hope of posterity, but unlike 
the mule, they do not pay their v/ay while they live and they 
give a set-back to farm progress by discouraging the buyer 
and his neighbors from adding new equipment. The good re- 
ceives a common condemnation with the bad. 

In a paper read before the American Society of Agricul- 
tural Engineers by Philip S. Rose, Editor of the American 
Thresherman and Gas Review, on the subject, "The Place 
and Field of Agricultural Engineering" I find this : 

"A recent survey of farm conditions by a government 
bureau showed that the majority of farm women put run- 
ning water in the house as the first necessity for making coun- 
try life more attractive. These are all matters of engineer- 
ing that must be met in the future. At present they are met 
very imperfectly through the propaganda of advertisers and 
ignorant local dealers. Farmers and country life generally 
can profit as much from well trained agricultural engineers 
as manufacturing has from mechanical and electrical engin- 
eers." 

This is pitifully true, but no more pitiful and damaging to 
farm progress than much of the hack writing that goes into 
farm papers and farm bulletins, written by people totally 
unacquainted with a practical knowledge of production or 
practical results attained in the hands of average farm peo- 
ple. One has only to be familiar with this class of "litera- 
ture" and the catalogues of dealers in this line to see that 
the writers have filled space largely by copying statements 
and cuts from each other and the catalogues of dealers. Hence, 
we find no agreement on basic facts, but a simple passing 
along to the farmer of untried theories or the opposing claims 
of rival manufacturers. 

It is hoped that this pamphlet will start a "shake down" 
which will help in separating the wheat from the chaff and 
lead to the establishing of certain basic facts and experiences 



which must be adhered to in the design and construction of 
such equipment if it is to fill its proper place as a foundation 
of farm efficiency. 

Somehow there must be a means of culling out "impure 
machinery" as well as impure foods and seeds. Machinery 
must have ancestry — pedigree — as well as live stock, and 
must be developed like live stock for a specific purpose. We 
not only need a ''Who's Who" in machinery, but a "What's 
What," for as much trouble can come from poor adaptation 
as from poor design and quality. As well raise scrubs as put 
Herefords in the dairy and Jerseys in the feed lot. 

Time and "natural selection" will weed out the fit from 
the unfit, but "artificial selection" saves time and loss. The 
farm tractor is being developed in the spot light, with piti- 
less publicity, in practical tests. There is no parallel method 
of showing up the hosts of inconspicuous failures in a multi- 
tude of farm homes. 

The head of one of the greatest agricultural colleges in 
the world recently said to me, "Most of our teachers are 
twenty-five years behind the time in practical afifairs because 
they have learned all they know from teachers." But these 
are the "experts" on whom farm papers largely depend, not 
simply for information in regard to the results of experiment 
station research, but to give the farmer advice on matters 
which can be learned only in practical life. 

Another source of supply for farm papers is the hack 
writer who agrees to furnish an article on any subject. He 
gets his information from anybody's catalogue, usually arrang- 
ing with the manufacturer for a certain payment for every 
time he can get the name of his product across in text or cuts. 

With only these two sources of information or the manu- 
facturer or dealer with a direct commercial interest to fall back 
on, and with so many columns to fill, the editor of a farm 
paper is truly between the Devil and the deep sea. 

But no information is better than wrong information. 
Most editors could get up a pretty effective "Who's Who" 
and "What's What" book without any extra expense if they 
would have their advertising solicitors ask for an introduc- 
tion to members of "engineering departments" or for a trip 
of inspection through the plants in which the advertised prod- 
ucts are "manufactured." Where these do not correspond 
with the advertising copy there investigation in the interest 
of the farmer is indicated. 



A board of censors in this department is needed, but in 
default of such authority it is up to all real friends of the 
farmer and the farm home to investig-ate thoroughly all types 
and brands of equipment before they endorse, approve, or 
advertise, either directly or indirectly. 

XENOPHON CAVERNO, 
February, 1916. Kewanee, 111. 



''Public health is purchasable. Within natural limitations 
any community can determine its oivn death rate.'' If isolated, 
yes. But the purchase price and the health and death rates can 
fiever be independent of the sanitary conditions on the farms from 
which a community draws its trade and its food supply . 



The men who are living ON but not IN our agricultural 
problem should search their hearts and minds with a solemn sense 
of responsibility. To them is given the opportunity to become the 
evangels of a new and better age. 



FARM EFFICIENCY 



How It Depends on Efficient Equipment 
For Living 



In a Rural Lite Survey, covering 21 representative coun- 
ties in the State of Ohio, conducted by ''The Department of 
Church and Country Life" of the Presbyterian Church, the 
following facts were developed in regard to farm incomes. 

''One-fourth of the farmers studied were highly success- 
ful, judging by the return which they received from their la- 
bors. They averaged a clear profit of nine hundred dollars 
apiece, over and above all farm and household expenses. This 
sum was quite sufficient to improve their farms, support their 
churches, and educate their children. Another fourth, while 
not so fortunate, still made enough comfortably to supply 
their needs. These averaged three hundred dollars clear for 
a year. So much for one-half of the farmers. * * * 

"Another fourth of these farmers were but just able to 
maintain themselves above the poverty line. These had one 
hundred dollars a year for all their needs above bare living 
expenses. The remaining fourth farmed at a loss and had 
no money reward for their labor. Their farms yielded them 
annual products worth on the average less than eighty-three 
dollars in excess of the actual cost of production. This sum 
must be stretched to cover household expenses and all other 
necessary expenditures of the family. This means that these 
men must draw upon their capital if they are to remain on 
the farm. Eventually it means that they will be starved off 
of the farm. These men who cannot support their families 
will not be any better able to support a church. The fact that 
there is a considerable proportion of the farming population 
not making a living and coupled with it the fact that there is 
another equal number who are barely able to remain on the 
farm furnish the first terms in the problem that is condition- 
ing the efficiency of the country church." 



However much these percentages may vary in different 
parts of the country, they "furnish the first terms of the prob- 
lem that is conditioning the efficiency" and prosperity of every 
state in the Union and of the United States of America. 

Taking North, South, East and West together, Ohio 
probably represents a fair average of farm conditions, and the 
conclusion that half of the farming in the United States is 
done below cost, if we include a decent American standard 
of living, is borne out by the figures in the census. Half of 
our farming is so poor that the average is pulled down to 14 
bushels of wheat and 27 bushels of corn per acre. The ra- 
tional conclusion is that an enormous amount of our farm land 
is in the hands of people who cannot or will not farm it suc- 
cessfully, and that such people are enabled to cumber the 
land and hold it out of good production, largely because they 
are protected from competition with a better type of people 
by the poor living conditions which they are willing to accept. 

Probably there are few things on which more Americans 
would agree than that the ideal type of American farming is 
not the landlord and' tenant system, nor yet the industrial 
type, in which laborers do the work and foreman and super- 
intendents furnish the brains, but that it is the family unit 
type in which hired help is reduced to a minimum. 

Granting that this is the ideal toward which we should 
like to see American farming develop, the next step is to try 
to discover whether we may shape a course in the stream of 
economic tendency which will ever approach our ideal, or 
whether our ideal is hopelessly counter to the current of 
evolution. Without argument it may be assumed that there 
is nothing to indicate that either "industrialized farming" or 
the landlord and tenant system holds the key to the farm effi- 
ciency of the future as compared with the independent home- 
owning family unit, and that there is much that points in the 
opposite direction. 

The conflict between "the highest yield per acre," re- 
quired by the nation, and "the highest yield per man," desired 
by the farmer, which was brought about by the invention of 
farm implements and the opening up of the cheap lands of the 
west, is rapidly disappearing with the advancing price of farm 
land. It can be still further reduced if we substitute for "the 
highest yield per man" "the highest yield per family" by giv- 
ing the balance of the family more efficient equipment for 
living and working. Farm implements and cheap land gave 



the farm man a disproportionate advantage in filling and con- 
trolling the family pocket book. The high price of farm land, 
the concentration of population, with more varied demands 
and closer markets, make possible a ''family unit" type of 
farming in which the men work as many acres as they can 
handle during seed time and harvest on the standard crops 
and live stock, and increase the income per man, not by add- 
ing more acres to be- worked indifYerently by more hired men, 
but by intensive use of a limited number of acres in which 
the whole family can join. 

It is with an intense desire to help in making this latter 
type of farming profitable and attractive that attention is 
called to a weak spot in the campaign for agricultural de- 
velopment, which is holding back the offensive of all of those 
who are operating along the more direct lines of attack. 

No human plan succeeds unless there is an ideal toward 
which effort is directed. 

No human effort directed. toward an ideal succeeds unless 
that ideal lies in the line of that "orderly progress of the uni- 
verse" in which we are swept along. 

Fifty years ago the idealist might have dreamed of fam- 
ily, or at least neighborhood, units of arts and crafts which 
would supply our need for manufactured products and pre- 
serve the old system of freedom and individualism. Any plans 
based on this ideal would have been doomed to failure. The 
trend of economic evolution did not lie in that direction. No 
national industrial department headed by a Secretary of In- 
dustry, no schools and colleges for industrial research and 
education, no industrial extension courses and free bulletins, 
no county industrial advisors, could have stemmed -the tide 
of economic tendency which has swept us irresistably toward 
concentration in industry. 

But if at that time the nation could have grasped the idea 
of things as they were going to be, if, instead of spending its 
energy vainly fighting the irresistable flow of the stream, it 
had guided and controlled the current, it might have shaped 
the development of our industrial life so that today it would 
be as efficient in human production as it is in material produc- 
tion. 

While American industry has become efficient American 
agriculture has remained inefficient because our glut of new 
land has made efficiency unnecessary, but now the practical 
exhaustion of the agricultural land in the public domain, and 

9 



the pressure of the increased cost of living, make agricultural 
efficiency a national necessity. ''Orderly progress" toward 
agricultural efficiency can be obtained only by setting up 
ideals of farm development which seem not only desirable but 
possible under agricultural and economic laws as we under- 
stand them, and by checking up frequently to see if we are 
actually making headway in the direction of our ideals. 

Is i"^ not true that a great deal of our effort to promote 
efficient agriculture lacks a definite ideal toward which it is 
directed, and a definite idea of the complete process by which 
our agricultural knowledge is to be translated into a bounte- 
ous food supply which will increase with the increasing de- 
mand of the nation? 

Now, it is a self-evident fact that the effectiveness of the 
work of our national Department of Agriculture, our schools 
and colleges for agricultural education and research, our agri- 
cultural extension courses and county agricultural advisors, 
our agricultural journals and bulletins, our banker-farmer and 
business men's associations for the promotion of agriculture, 
is limited absolutely (not exclusively) by the will and ambi- 
tion and by the mental and physical ability of the actual till- 
ers of the soil, and it is also true that much of our farm land 
is in the hands of people who are incapable of assimilating 
and applying the help offered by all of these agencies. But 
even this hard combination does not release these agencies 
from responsibility for solving the problem of farm efficiency ; 
it simply shows that more study and efifort must be put on 
the receiving end. If they fail to do this it is an exact paral- 
lel to the farmer who has good seed but a poor seed bed, who 
keeps on sowing the seed and sowing the seed and says, "If 
it won't grow, it won't ; I am not responsible for the soil." 

Now, the surest foundation for a bounteous yield, even 
from good seed, is an accurate knowledge of the characteris- 
tics of the soil. In sowing the seed of agricultural efficiency, 
has sufficient attention been given to the character of the soil 
and the condition of the seed bed — to farm people and the 
conditions in which they live and grow? 

THE EVOLUTION OF THE FARMER. 

Our homesteading system, by which the great bulk of 
our agricultural lands passed to private ownership, drew b)^ 
natural selection the physically rather than the mentally 



10 



The rugged qualities and indifference to hardship, which 
made the ideal pioneers, are not those which fit a man for 
the complex problems of modern agriculture. 

For generations the smartest and most ambitious boys 
on the farm have been drawn to the cities because farming 
has been a matter of physical strength, not of brains, and 
because the city offered greater rewards and far more at- 
tractive living conditions. 

The natural selection by which our rented farms have 
been filled up has led in the same direction. The owner has 
usually been satisfied with a low return on a safe investment. 
It takes more investment to equip a farm to attract a high 
grade tenant who can pay a high rent from increased yield. 
A low grade tenant can pay a high rent, without requiring 
additional investment for, equipment, by living on a lower 
scale. 

The advancing price of farm land added another factor 
which restricted the number of efficient people available for 
farmers. A man must not only be strong physically, indif- 
ferent to the' comforts of living, and have a wife of the same 
kind, but he must have money. There are few people who 
meet these specifications. 

While the trend of evolution has been attracting brain 
power to the cities and keeping it off of the farms, the con- 
ditions of farm living have restricted the efficiency of the 
brain power actually on the farms, and meanwhile agricul- 
ture has developed into a complex combination of physical 
and economic science which staggers the imagination. 

PRESENT CONDITION OF AMERICAN FARMING. 

Consumption of food products is increasing faster than 
production. 

The policy of breaking in new land to increase our food 
supply is practically at an end. 

Increase in farm products must come from increase in 
yield per acre. 

Our average yield per acre of staple farm crops is less 
than half of that of Europe or our own good farming. 

Our own good farmers have proved that by present 
known methods of farming our average yield might be doub- 
led if the rest of the farmers had the brains and equipment. 

11 



There is no danger that the farmers will get additional 
brains and equipment fast enough to reduce the profits of 
farming. 

The way to increase farm yields has been established by 
agricultural colleges and experiment stations. The knowl- 
edge of how this can be done has been thrust at the farmers 
by free bulletins, extension courses, county agricultural ad- 
visors, and farm papers. 

Enough farmers have responded to show that the infor- 
mation offered is practical and correct. The great bulk of 
farmers have not responded at all. 

In other lines of business people protect by patents, or 
conceal by secret processes, the methods by which they can 
double their output. 

The great bulk of the farmers refuse to adopt such meth- 
ods even when the knowledge is thrust at them. 

In spite of all of the vast store of information that has 
been collected and proven out, in spite of all the agencies 
for placing this at the disposal of the farmer, the average 
production of corn still stands at about 27 bushels per acre 
and of wheat at about 14 bushels per acre as it did before the 
science of agriculture was established. The conclusion is in- 
evitable that something is wrong at the receiving end — the 
farmer himself. 

THE ROAD TO FARM EFFICIENCY. 

The fact that average American farming is inefficient has 
been established, and the evolutionary process of growth and 
the present conditions of farm living, coupled with the pres- 
ent demands of efficient agriculture, make the fact of farm 
inefficiency not only understandable, but inevitable. 

To establish this fact and this cause may be but a small 
fraction of the remedy, but it is the first fraction to which 
the balance of the remedy must be fitted. The next step is to 
understand the human requirements of efficient farming : what 
type of people are needed. 

The brain power required for the continuous successful 
farming of a quarter section of land up to standards which 
may be called efficient, measured by present agricultural 
knowledge, is as great as is required for the successful man- 
agement of a bank, agricultural college, or any other type of 
business. 

12 



The man who has brains enough to manage such a farm 
successfully has brains enough to succeed in other lines, and 
the farm must bid against the city on its merits if it is to at- 
tract him or hold him. 

The number of men and women who are strong, both 
mentally and physically, is limited. To them the world is 
open and farming will not attract them all, and their num- 
ber is too small to fill the requirements if it did. 

Physical deficiency can be supplemented by mechanical 
equipment and by living conditions which conserve vitality, 
but there is no mechanical substitute for brains. 

Efficient farming today requires brain strength. Proper 
living and working equipment will open farming to an im- 
mense number of men and women who have the brains to 
succeed but have not the physical ability to stand the fatigue 
and hardship of farming under the conditions prevailing on 
the average farm. 

If these facts are true they should be given their proper 
place in all plans for the promotion of agriculture, and their 
place is near the foundation, in fact, just below it. 

More attractive living and working conditions on the 
farm will attract a higher type of people. A higher type of 
people working with more efficient equipment will bring 
higher yields. Higher yields will support a higher type of 
living, which will attract a higher type of people, and so on. 
This is a circle with no beginning and no ending, but in it 
lies the success of all our agricultural effort. Which should 
come first? — the attractive equipment or the intelligent peo- 
ple? The problem is not so simple as that. Now it will be 
one, now the other, now a little of both. The first step is to 
catch the ideal. Ways and means will develop with time and 
experience. 

Even among "successful" farmers there is a similar cycle 
of progress which should be set in motion as a basis for the 
advance work of all agencies for promoting good farming. 
People grow into wanting what they see and what they see 
their neighbors have. The more they want, the more they 
will work to get the money to buy it. The more money they 
make, the more they see that they want, and so on. Now 
the ''by-product" of this process when it gets started on the 
farm is increased farm yields, which is the object of all our 
agricultural efforts. This is so ev^en if the things desired are 
useless. It is doubly so if the things desired promote the at- 

13 



tractiveness and efficiency of farm living and working. The 
successful farmer who spends his money buying more land 
than he can handle to the best effect, helps neither himself 
nor his country, and the added burden is apt to drive both 
himself and his children from the farm. The successful 
farmer who spends his money to make his farm more efficient 
and attractive and so more productive, not only adds to his 
wealth and that of the nation, he not only holds hirriself and 
his family as expert workers on the farm, but he starts among 
his neighbors that endless chain of wanting and working, 
and starts it in the direction which leads toward our best 
ideals of farm living and to national prosperity as well. 

Now, what is this ''equipment for living," which has the 
power to make farming so efficient, attractive, and productive? 
Just how will it help all these other agencies which are try- 
ing to help the farmer? Just how will it help the farmer him- 
self? What will it cost? What return will it yield? How is 
the farmer to learn to select it intelligently and use it effec- 
tively? 

Before answering these quesitons let us make a sort of 
soil analysis of the farming situation and see what elements 
it lacks to make it a good seed bed for all the seeds of agri- 
cultural efficiency which have been sown so liberally and 
have yielded to sparingly. 

THE LURE OF THE CITY. 

The lure of the city is a two-faced affair. On the one 
hand it offers to the young and adventurous glitter and tinsel, 
theatres, excitement, dissipation, luxury, fortune. It offers 
fortune, but seldom delivers. On the other hand, to settled 
and sensible people, as well as to the tired and the aged, it 
offers comforts and conveniences which make a strong and 
legitimate appeal. 

THE PULL OF THE PUBLIC UTILITIES. 

These comforts and conveniences which city people have 
and country people do not, are those furnished by public 
utilities, water, gas, electric light, electric power, sewerage, 
transportation, — things which have been developed to high 
efficiency only in large units to serve large numbers of peo- 
ple in congested districts, 

14 



THE SOCIAL INSTINCT. 
The "isolation of farm living" is given as an important 
factor in driving the best farmers to town, but this is mixmg 
cause and eflfect. This "isolation" has been created largely 
by the moving to town of the best families and the substitu- 
tion of a low grade of tenants. Is it lonesomeness or weari- 
ness that drives the farmer and his wife from the farm? The 
average retired farmer is a pathetically lonesome figure in 
town. Ask him why he quit the farm, and nine times out of 
ten he will reply: "Wife couldn't stand the work. Some- 
times it is he himself who breaks down, sometimes the educa- 
tion of the children causes the move, but reaching the limit 
of "mother's" strength is the usual cause. 

WHERE THE BREAK COMES. 
\ farm like an army, breaks down with its commissary 
and sanitarv departments. The slender link of a woman's 
endurance limits the strength of the chain of farm living. And 
this link has not been strengthened in the whole march of 
our boasted civilization. The eyes of the nation have been 
fixed on our farmers just as they were on our lighting men 
at the time of the Spanish war. The brass bands did not 
march at the head of the sanitary and commissary depart- 
ment, and the' result is history. It is the same with our arm 
livinc^ today. The sanitary and commissary departments have 
made no advance since the days of our great grandmothers. 
The substitution of the stove for the open fireplace is the 
last in fact the only, real improvement in the equipment ot 
the farm home which has been generally adopted. 

A ONE-SIDED RECORD. 

Compare this record with that of equipment for the man's 
work on the farm. Reapers and mowers, riding plows and 
cultivators, planters and seeders, hay rakes and loaders, feed 
grinders and wood saws, hay forks and corn e evators corn 
binders, manure spreaders, litter carriers, ensilage and od- 
der cutters, threshing machines, hay balers and corn shellers. 
milking machines, windmills and pumps, stationary and port- 
able engines and tractors, and literally hundreds of other ma- 
chines for special crops and conditions. 

Nor is this all. National and state governments col- 
leges, universities, and experiment stations, have employed 



15 



an enormous corps of trained experts and scientists to study 
soils, seeds, insects, fungi, birds, and beasts ; to scour the 
face of the earth for new grains and grasses, plants and ani- 
mals; to study feeds and feeding, breeds and breeding; to 
design barns, dairies, granaries, corn cribs, and silos. All 
this is good but only half effective, because the farmhouse 
has not been brought up to the same advanced line. A city 
man living close to a restaurant and a laundry may class his 
wife as a luxury. A farmer cannot. When his kitchen breaks 
down his farm breaks down. The kitchen organization must 
come first in time and importance. 



ASK GENERAL GOETHALS. 

A great deal of our advance work in agriculture is being 
done on the model of the Spanish war, not of the Panama 
Canal. How would General Goethals begin if he were given 
a free hand to put American farming into the highest state of 
efficiency? He would provide the most comfortable and 
healthful living conditions before he started on farming oper- 
ations or even the equipment for the farming. He would make 
farm living so attractive that those who were there would 
want to stay, and those who were not there would want to 
come. He would make farm conditions so healthful and 
comfortable that the sick-list would be reduced to the min- 
imum and the efficiency kept at the maximum. He would 
begin with the sanitary and commissary departments. 



THE FARMER'S WIFE. 

The work of the farmer's wife is not only hard and ex- 
hausting, it is continuous and practically unvarying. The 
seasonal changes, which relieve the monotony of the outdoor 
work on the farm do not penetrate to the kitchen. There is 
the same lugging of water and slops, the washing and iron- 
ing, the sweeping and scrubbing, the filling of lamps and 
making of beds, the sewing and mending, the care of the chil- 
dren, and the everlasting three meals a day. No other class 
has derived so little from modern progress and invention, in 
comfort and luxury, in relief from grinding toil, as the farm- 
er's wife. This is a neglect for which the whole nation is 
paying an awful price in the high cost of living. 

16 



ENTER T?IE MICROBE. 

Not only has modern labor-saving invention passed the 
farmer's wife by, modern sanitation has as well. The strong- 
hold of typhoid fever, dysentery, and all enteric diseases is 
now in the country. Privies and cesspools distribute diseases 
through the medium of flies and polluted drinking water. 
An over-tired body is not resistant to disease. The personal 
cleanliness required for health is almost impossible without 
a heated house, a bath tub, and running water. The chill of 
unheated rooms, the sudden plunge from the heated kitchen to 
the pump in the yard, the chill from going to the outside 
privy in winter, and the poisoning of the system from staying 
away through dread of the exposure, complete the invitation 
to disease. An overworked body, the presence of disease 
germs, the lowering of vitality by exposure, the mental de- 
pression from the monotonous routine ; this is a combination 
which few farmers' wives escape. Some have the strength to 
stand up under it; most of them do not. 

We recoil from the concentrated misery of the city 
slums, of the sweat-shops and factories because it is concen- 
trated We tolerate the great sum of individual miseries on 
the farm because they are individual. If all of them could be 
massed before our eyes a cry of horror would go up to heaven. 
And behind the pity of it lies the economic waste; the crip- 
pling of the one great basic industry of our country on which 
all others depend. And in the individual economic waste, as 
in the individual misery, we lose sight of the grand total. 



A MODERATE PICTURE. 

This picture of farm living is not overdrawn. In some 
sections a fair proportion of the farms have some of the life- 
and health-saving improvements (few real farms have them 
all) but the number compared with the total number of 
farms is negligible. No attempt has been made to picture the 
added discomforts and dangers due to the houses, which in 
themselves are crowded and unsanitary and generally unfit to 
live in or to suggest the not uncommon drain on vitality of 
bearing and raising a large family of children. It would be 
easy to paint a much blacker picture and still be withm the 
limits of truth. 

17 



LIFTING A TON OF WATER A DAY. 

Neither is the possible saving in the wear and tear on a 
woman's life exaggerated. President Joe Cook, of the Missis- 
sippe Normal College, in a bulletin of the United States Bur- 
eau of Education, makes the rather startling statement that 
the average farmer's v^ife has to lift a ton of water a day. 
Here is how he figures it: 

"The getting of the water from the source of supply to 
the point of application requires more manual labor than any 
other item of housekeeping. The water for the kitchen has 
to be lifted from the well, carried to the kitchen, poured into 
a kettle, poured out of the kettle into the dishpan, and from 
the dishpan out of doors. This makes six times the water is 
handled ; and a bucket of water containing 2 gallons, with the 
containing vessel, will weigh 20 pounds. When this is han- 
dled six times, the total lifting is 120 pounds. The cooking 
of three meals a day on a meager allowance of water will 
necessitate 10 buckets, which will make for cooking alone, 
1200 pounds of lifting per day. When to this is added the 
water necessary for bathing, scrubbing, and the weekly wash, 
it will easily bring the lift per day up to a ton; and the lift- 
ing of a ton a day will take the elasticity out of a woman's 
step, the bloom out of her cheek, and the enjoyment from 
her soul." 

SUPPOSE. 

Imagine an average farm home without modern improve- 
ments and conveniences. Picture to yourself an average farm- 
er's wife as she goes through her daily routine. Follow 
every step from the time she starts the fire in the frigid 
kitchen till she lays wearily down the last pair of mended 
stockings at night. Now by magic transfer her in her sleep 
into a house with just the plain conveniences ; a heating sys- 
tem ; running water, hot and cold ; a bathroom with lavatory, 
closet, and bath tub ; a sanitary system of sewage disposal ; 
a power plant that not only pumps the water but runs an 
electric lighting plant with storage battery; a power washing 
machine and wringer, a power separator and churn, a vacuum 
cleaner, and perhaps an electric flatiron and a little motor to 
run the sewing machine. 

Give her an extra hour to sleep. The kitchen is warm, 
the water is hot, and she can get breakfast in a jiffy on the 

18 



oil stove. Now picture to yourself her day's work and her 
day's uplift to body, mind, and soul. It is the difference be- 
tween losing and winning, between conquering and being 
conquered. Look at these pictures from the standpoint of 
efficiency, of humanity, of romance. No magic of Aladdin's 
lamp could work a greater transformation or bring greater 
joy and comfort. 

THE COST OF A MIRACLE. 

And what would be the cost? A long spell of sickness 
and first-class funeral would buy the whole plant. The wages 
of a hired girl, or two weeks of a nurse and doctor would 
much more than carry the interest on the investment; so 
would the price of a fair cow or a poor horse. 

A PAYING INVESTMENT. 

In addition to the saving in health and strength, in hired 
help, nursing, medicine, and doctor bills, such equipment af- 
fords many other advantages. A good heating system will 
heat the whole house at less cost than stoves will heat half 
of it, a sprinkled garden in a dry season may easily save a 
hundred dollars in groceries. A little water at the right time 
and in the right spot frequently saves the house from burn- 
ing. The farmer himself might profit by a good warm bath 
in winter and a cold one in summer after his day's work. 
Oil lamps, candles, lanterns, and matches cause most country 
fires, both in house and barn. Time saved in the house could 
be spent profitably in the garden or with the poultry or bees. 
And these outdoor interests would not only be profitable 
financially, they would introduce the change and variety of 
interests which break the monotony of living and bring phy- 
sical health and mental sanity. 

THE NEEDS OF FARM WOMEN. 

The basic needs of farm women have been grouped by 
the United States Department of Agriculture under four 
heads — The Economic Needs (Report 106), The Social and 
Labor Needs (Report 103), The Educational Needs (Report 
105), and The Domestic Needs (Report 104), and the latter, 
the domestic needs, must be met before the former can be, 
because the others all depend on a surplus of time and vitality 

19 



over that required for the routine work of the farm home. A 

retinue of servants on the farm is neither possible nor de- 
sirable, and the number of women available for farmers' wives 
with iron constitutions, to smash out a day's work without 
help or conveniences, and have surplus time and vitality for 
supplying these various needs, is pitifully small. 

Important as woman is in the economic side of farming, 
there is yet another field in which she is more important. The 
farm home, and farm community, should become a center of 
social life, of education and refinement, of culture in its best 
and truest sense, and this cannot be if the choice of farmers' 
wives is determined by physical characteristics only. Farm- 
ers' wives must not be confined to the draught type. They 
must be more than dual-purpose ; they must be multi-purpose. 
You cannot select for one predominating quality continually 
without losing on all other qualities, and no class of people 
can escape degeneration in the higher qualities if its wives 
and mothers are selected primarily for physical strength. 



AMERICANIZING THE IMMIGRANT. 

The American farm must not be abandoned to foreign 
races just because their women can stand the work and do 
not demand living equipment up to the American standard. 
The city slums are due to the isolation of the immigrants 
from contact with the best type of American living. The 
children of foreigners have an intense desire to become Amer- 
icans, to adopt American manners and customs. They copy 
what they see — in the city too often the ward boss and the 
women of the street. On the farm, where we need them, 
and where they ought to go, they should not be substituted 
for American farmers, they should be mixed with them, and 
the type of Americans, which they and their children should 
have around them as their models, should not be limited to 
the physically strong only. When brought into contact with 
the best type of American home and community life, the 
children of foreign born parents become at once a social and 
economic asset ; when set off by themselves they fail neces- 
sarily to rise to the American standard of living, and when 
planted in backward or degenerate communities they become 
a social liability. It is possible to have country slums as well 
as city slums. 

20 



THE GOOD OLD DAYS ARE GONE. 

In the old days farming was a life, not a business. There 
was a community of interest in the family which is lacking in 
modern farming. The main object of farming was to raise 
and store up during the summer the supply of food for the 
balance of the year. Even the fodder crops were not raised 
to sell, nor were the farm animals. The bulk of these were 
used for living. The little surplus not required for living was 
sold for money or traded for the comparatively few things 
not produced on the farm. Hard and simple as this life was, 
it brought out the finest type of family life, of independent 
manhood and womanhood the world has ever seen. All 
shared in the work of the rush season, all shared in the leisure 
of the slack season. 

It is said of those days that a large family was the most 
profitable crop a farmer could raise. But the children were 
partners in a life then, whereas, if kept on the farm today, 
they are too often mere employes in an industry. Whether 
for better or for worse, the fact stands out, however, that 
modern custom has too often made the children a burden, not 
a help, to the already overworked farm mother. 

GIVE THE FARMER'S AVIFE A CHANCE. 

With the coming of farm machinery and the cultivation 
of large areas, the work of the man became a specialized in- 
dustry, and the woman ran a boarding house for the work- 
ers, generally receiving her "board and keep" for her work. 
In general, the farm woman has about the least economic 
independence of any of her sex. Any business founded on 
the political or economic dependence of woman is headed the 
wrong way. 

There is no slack season in running a farm boarding 
house. Rest, if there is any, must be provided for in the daily 
schedule. Work for "pin money" or "economic independence" 
must be done in spare time each day, and with spare health 
and strength. Give the women on the farm the time and 
strength to work out their own lines of "specialized industry," 
and they will work up a volume of business in innumerable 
lines which will loom large in the aggregate among the great 
productive enterprises of the world. 

The farm papers and farmers' bulletins are filled with 
suggestions and practical instructions along such lines. All 

21 



that the farmers' wives and daughters need is time to study 
up methods and markets, and time and health to do the work. 
The enormous poultry and egg business of the country, 
amounting to half a billion dollars annually, and ranking with 
the iron and steel business, depends almost wholly on the 
spare time of farm women. By increasing this spare time, the 
amount of business might be largely increased and more 
profitable methods of marketing worked up. 

FROM PRODUCER TO CONSUMER. 

With the efforts of the Post Office Department and the 
express companies to bring the producer and consumer to- 
gether, a new field of profitable enterprise is opened to the 
women on the farm. Poultry, eggs, fresh and canned vegeta- 
bles and fruits, pickles, preserves, butter and cheese, honey, 
and various other products can be sold direct to the consumer. 
The surplus strength and time, now wasted on work, which 
might be done by machinery, the surplus health and energy, 
which good living equipment would bring, would enable the 
farm women to work up a business of staggering proportions, 
which would pay back a hundred fold all the cost of equip- 
ment. And the full value of cutting out the middleman would 
not be measured by cutting out his profit. The business rela- 
tions established between city and country people would grow 
into personal acquaintance in innumerable cases, with mutual 
understanding and breadth of vision, instead of the petty feel- 
ings of jealousy or contempt founded on ignorance of each 
other, which exist so largely today. Better living conditions 
in the country would increase the respect of city people for 
country people and of country people for themselves, making 
acquaintance easier and more pleasant, and encouraging visits 
back and forth. 

MAKING GOOD CITIZENS. 

And, as a crowning result of efficient equipment should 
come leisure, not laziness, not rest necessarily, but leisure to 
choose rest or work, and if work, what kind of work, leisure 
to read, leisure to think, leisure to develop a soul. 

No nation should be called civilized, no country should be 
called Christian, in which the minimum standard of living does 
not provide for a reasonable amount of leisure for every man 
and woman. No country is safe which does not insure to its 

22 



citizens a margin of time and vitality which is not exhausted 
in the mere physical struggle for existence. The power to 
vote, without leisure to read and think, is an unmitigated 
danger. 

STOPPING THE DRIFT TO TPIE CITY. 

Equipment of the farm home with modern comforts and 
conveniences would strike at the root of our whole farming 
problem. It would stop the drift of the owner to town, and 
the substitution of a tenant who has no interest except to rob 
the soil of all he can each year. It would check the drift of 
the farm boys and girls to the towns and cities. A hall bed- 
room in a city boarding house would not be so alluring com- 
pared to the farm home. Thousands of intelligent people in 
towns and cities would move to the farm if they could be as- 
sured of these comforts and labor-saving devices. 

With people staying on the farms and people coming to 
the farms, the isolation of the farm would be decreased. With 
more farmers available there would be smaller farms and bet- 
ter cultivation, and so still less isolation. Time, money, the 
mail carrier, the telephone, the automobile, and good roads 
would complete the annihilation of the isolation bugaboo. 

A NATIONAL DANGER. 

Progress is a resultant of two forces. Prove all things, 
but hold fast that which is good. Our industrial system is 
building up a great radical force which needs a balance wheel. 
Living on the land, one's own land, is the best builder of 
sanity and balance in the world. The industrializing of farm- 
ing by working large tracts of land with hired help, or even 
the general adoption of the landlord and tenant system, would 
change the whole course of our national development. That 
this is generally appreciated is shown by the almost frantic 
efforts of the national and state governments to promote agri- 
culture. The result of all these efforts has been pitifully 
small. They may have checked the decrease in our average 
yield per acre, but they have scarcely started an increase, and 
we are still only 50 per cent efficient on the average compared 
with European agriculture or our own good farming. This 
is not chargeable to the land or to lack of available knowl- 
edge. It is due to inefficiency— inefficiency of mind, ineffici- 
ency of equipment. The great big hole in efficient equipment 

23 



has been in the equipment of the farm home, the equipment 
for living. When the conditions of farm living- are made 
efficient and attractive there will be plenty of efficient minded 
people ready to go back to the land. 

EQUIPMENT FOR LIVING. 

A farm needs two types of equipment — equipment for liv- 
ing and equipment for operating. Efficient equipment for liv- 
ing comes first and should include everything that makes 
farm living healthful and attractive and reduces the wear on 
vitality to the lowest limit. Such equipment includes good 
houses, heating, plumbing, water supply, gas or electricity, 
sewage disposal, power to drive washing machines, vacuum 
cleaners, small separators, churns, and sewing machines, ice 
houses or refrigerating machines, sleeping porches, porch 
screens and awnings, electric fans, electric flatiron, lawns, gar- 
dens, orchards, croquet sets, tennis courts, swings, automo- 
biles, pianos, organs and phonographs. Any or all of these, 
and a great many more such things, may be made the basis 
of farm efficiency. Whatever adds to the attraction of coun- 
try living, whatever promotes physical health and mental san- 
ity; whatever reduces the wear and grind of work and saves 
time for better things, is just as necessary equipment as 
buildings, live stock, farm implements, or even the land it- 
self. It is not expense, it is basic investment. 

MAKING MONEY WITH A MORTGAGE. 

It pays to borrow money to buy good permanent equip- 
ment for efficient living and working. "Our trouble has been 
that there is not enough debt on the American farms. Con- 
trast them with the railroads which represent an investment 
of $15,000,000,000. Yet they are mortgaged up to $11,000,000,- 
000, or nearly 80 per cent. But this indebtedness has meant 
new equipment, enlarged service, increased efficiency, and 
more income. Our farms are worth approximately $40,000,- 
000,000 and carry debt burdens of barely $6,000,000,000, or 15 
per cent. With a larger mortgage load they would have a big- 
ger producing power if the money were wisely spent. Our 
mortgaged farms are more valuable than the unmortgaged. 
Their average of acreage under cultivation is greater, their 
yield larger, their equipment better, and their assessment 
higher." 

24 



THE BANKER'S PART. 

Bankers, and especially country bankers, are taking 
greater interest in better farming. They frequently encour- 
age the farmer by offering to lend him money for silos or 
other farm improvements. There is no better way for a bank- 
er to benefit his community or lay a foundation for the pros- 
perity of his bank than by helping the farmer to put in first- 
class equipment for living, and for doing all possible work 
by machinery in the most efficient way. Such equipment is 
not "unproductive investment." The road back to the cash 
box is not more crooked than it is in the case of a silo, a good 
barn, tile drainage, or quality live stock. 

MINIMUM EQUIPMENT FOR HOUSE AND BARN. 

No farm is equipped for efficient work which does not 
have a comfortable house with a heater (hot air, hot water, or 
steam), running water, hot and cold, a complete bathroom, a 
kitchen sink, laundry trays or slop sink, a lavatory on the first 
floor if the bathroom is on the second, a sanitary system of 
sewage disposal, and a power washing machine. These should 
be classed as necessary equipment for every farm home. 

Nor is any farm equipped for efficient work which does 
not have a plentiful supply of running water conveniently dis- 
tributed for stock watering, sprinkling, and fire protection. 

The cost of this minimum equipment of a high grade type 
for the average farm will vary from $700 to $1000 according 
to the size of power plant and the type of heating system. 
Taking the larger figure, the interest charge at 6% will amount 
to $60 per year. Let us consider the direct as well as the in- 
direct ways in which this equipment will earn its carrying 
charges and pay a cash dividend. 

THE NATURE OF FATIGUE. 

No one can draw correct conclusions as to the financial 
saving which can be effected, by having labor-saving equip- 
ment on the farm, without a knowledge of the physiological 
effects of overstrain and overwork. The human body is con- 
stantly in a state of change ; nutritive material from the food 
is carried to the tissues by the blood and waste products from 
the broken down tissue removed. These waste products are 
true poisons, but under normal conditions they are eliminated 

25 



by the liver, kidneys, and lungs, as fast as they are produced. 
Exertion increases the rate of production of these poisons, 
overexertion increases the amount beyond the ability of the 
blood and organs of elimination to remove them, and fatigue 
results from a true poisoning of the system. In this building 
up and tearing down process a certain variation is possible 
without ill effects. Tissue may be torn down faster than it is 
replaced for a limited time without evil effect if effort is fol- 
lowed by repose, in which the lost tissue can be rebuilt. 

There are two ways of poisoning the system by the toxins 
of fatigue, overwork, and overtime — working too hard and 
working too long hours. The question of how hard a man 
or woman can work or how many hours they can keep at it 
and preserve their physical and mental efficiency has been 
given some attention by physiologists, philanthropists, and 
efficiency experts as it relates to industrial employment. That 
is recognized as a proper sphere of expert inquiry for our na- 
tional and economic protection, and a very instructive sum- 
mary^has been prepared under the auspices of the Sage Foun- 
dation ("Fatigue and Efficiency" by Josephine Goldmark). 

FATIGUE ON THE FARM. 

From cover to cover, however, there is no suggestion that 
the facts be applied to farm conditions. Evidently no scien- 
tist or philanthropist has discovered that overtime and over- 
work exist on the farm, and that the individual cases of fatigue 
poisoning, with all their train of weariness, suffering, disease, 
and death, dotted over the country, make a grand total greater 
than that of city industries, and at a much more vulnerable 
point in our national life. 

FACTS ABOUT FATIGUE. 

While the bulk of this volume refers to conditions in in- 
dustry, its foundation is laid on facts of human anatomy 
and physiology, which apply to the whole race. A few ran- 
dom quotations from this book, which should be studied by 
everyone interested in the problem of improved farm living, 
follow : 

''Not only does tissue manufacture poison for itself in 
its very act of living, casting off chemical wastes into the cir- 
cling bloodstream ; not only are these wastes poured into the 

26 



blood faster with increased exertion, clogging the muscle 
more and more with its own noxious products; but finally, 
there is a depletion of the very material from which energy is 
obtained. In exhaustion, the organism is forced literally to 
'use itself up.' We shall see later how destructive to health 
this phenomenon of exhaustion is, to which nervous as well 
as muscular tissue is subject; how long it takes to make good 
such losses ; how exhaustion, indeed, taps the very source of 
our energies." 

''Overstrain in industry is obviously no invention of sen- 
timent or fiction when the chemical nature of fatigue and its 
complex relations with life are realized. The more we learn 
of the scientific nature of fatigue, the more it invites us to 
utilize such knowledge for the improvement of working con- 
ditions." 

"Our body is not constructed like a locomotive which con- 
•sumes the same quantity of coal for every kilogrammetre of 
work. When the body is fatigued, even a small amount of 
work produces disastrous eflfects. * * * The workman 
that persists in his task when he is already fatigued not only 
produces less efifective work, but receives greater injury to 
his organism." 

"Monotony often inflicts more injury than greater mus- 
cular exertion just because it requires continuous recurring 
work from nerve centers, fatigue of which, as we have seen, 
reacts with such disastrous consequences upon our total life 
and health. The evils of monotony illustrate again how close- 
ly all the functions of our life are bound up together ; how the 
physical and nervous and psychic parts of us react and in- 
teract upon one another. Aversion from a monotonous grind 
of work, the effort of the will to 'keep up,' requires just so 
much more nervous stimulus from already tired nerve cen- 
ters." 

"The relatively slight impairment of efficiency due to 
overfatigue leads to more serious impairment. Just as minor 
ailments prove to have an unsuspected importance when con- 
sidered as gateways to serious illness, so the inefficiency from 
overfatigue is vested with great significance. Obviously, if 
overfatigue would be reduced to a minimum, this reduction 
would carry with it the prevention of the major part of minor 
ailments, which in turn would lead to a great reduction in 
more serious illnesses, and this finally would lead to a great 
reduction in mortality. A typical succession of events is, first 

27 



fatig-ue, then colds, then tuberculosis, then death. Preven- 
tion, lo be effective, must begin at the beginning." 

THE CASH COST OF FATIGUE. 

These quotat^ions have been given to prove that the items 
of overwork and fatigue cannot be neglected in striking the 
cash balance at the end of the farm year. They cost money 
in reduced efficiency, in doctor's bills, in funerals. And it is 
not only from equipment that saves the body and nerves from 
fatigue that the cash value from increased health and effici- 
ency comes, it comes also from anything that promotes rest, 
relaxation, and repose, and allows the body to repair the phy- 
sical and nervous waste which accumulates during the day on 
even the best equipped farm. 

THE TOTAL COST OF FATIGUE. 

Back of the question of the cost of fatigue-preventing 
equipment lies still another real question. If you save the 
cost and keep the fatigue, what have you left? To quote 
again from the same book: 

"Fatigue does mischief negatively as well as positively: 
lowering vitality and breeding disease is its active and posi- 
tive aspect. Shutting out the exhausted from their rightful 
heritage, contracting, binding, inhibiting, is its negative. 
Other faculties suft'er as well as the vital bodily functions. For 
as exhaustion nullifiies the benefits of better food and shelter, 
so, too, it paralyses the higher activities, all that feeds men's 
mental and spiritual needs. The higher standard of living in- 
cludes besides food and drink and clothing, better education, 
saner amusements, nobler recreation. But as the over-fatigued 
digestion fails, so over-fatigued hearing is blunted, over- 
fatigued attention and appreciation flag. Offer what oppor- 
tunities you will to the exhausted organism, they fall upon 
literally deafened ears. Fatigue so closes the avenues of ap- 
proach within, that education does not educate, amusement 
does not amuse, nor recreation recreate. Books and learning, 
pictures, music, play — all the enfranchisements of the spirit 
lose their power." 

But even in this flight of idealism the cashable items ap- 
pear. When through fatigue "education does not educate" in 
these days of county agents, experiment stations, farm papers, 
and farmers' bulletins, there is a cash loss of more than $60 
on any farm in any year. 

28 



THE BIG FOUR. 

Keeping in mind the nature of fatigue and the value, not 
only of equipment which reduces fatigue, but also of equip- 
ment which aids the fatigued body and brain to recover their 
vigor through rest and relaxation, let us consider the cost and 
value of the four main items of equipment— Heating, Water 
Supply, Plumbing, Lighting. 



THE HEATING PROBLEM. 

A good heating system is not only a necessity for the 
protection of water pipes and plumbing fixtures, on which 
health so largely depends, but it is even more directly con- 
nected with the health problem. Sleeping in a cold room may 
be a good thing, but sleeping in a bed which has absorbed the 
damp chill of an unheated room is another matter. Heat 
should be available in every room in the house. To heat the 
whole house by stoves would cost more than with a heater, 
and the house would not be well heated at that. 

Stoves make work in carrying fuel and ashes, blacking the 
stove, sweeping and dusting rooms, cleaning rugs and car- 
pets, and washing curtains. The soot and ashes blacken walls 
and ceilings. This not only takes time and vitality, which 
might be used at a profit, but it soon calls for a cash outlay 
to renew rugs, carpets, and curtains, and for repapering and 
painting. Heat from stoves fluctuates greatly. A moderate, 
even heat is required to bring about the relaxation of nerves 
and muscles, which is necessary for the repair of waste tissue 
and keeping body and brain in fit condition. 

A hot air heater is low in price, supplies fresh air, heats 
up quickly, and supplies much or little heat according to the 
weather. In a small, compact house it is very efftcient. In 
large houses and where the pipes are of unequal length, it is 
hard to deliver heat against the wind. 

A steam heater will deliver heat anywhere. The piping 
system and radiation cost less than in a hot water system, but 
the fuel cost is higher. It is too intense for mild weather, 
however, and the heat is apt to fluctuate greatly. Steam heat 
is better adapted to large buildings than to homes. 

A vapor system of heating lies between steam and hot 
water in cost of equipment, cost of fuel, intensity of heat and 
general fitness for home conditions^ 

29 



A hot water system is the best for house heating. The 
heat can be varied to suit the weather, and the fuel cost is low. 
It is slow to heat up, but it is slow to cool off also. It re- 
quires more head work to lay out the piping system, and it 
costs more to install than steam or vapor, as it takes more 
pipe, radiation, and labor. 

A hot air, steam, or vapor heater must be set below the 
rooms to be heated and the piping system must be run in thr 
cellar. No matter how well the pipes are covered the heat is 
apt to spoil the cellar for the storage of vegetables. 

A hot water heater may be set on, or above, the level of 
the radiators and the hot water pipes distributed to the radia- 
tors without going through the cellar. Only the cold water 
return need come through the cellar. Where there is no cel- 
lar or where for any reason the heater and pipes are not want- 
ed in the cellar, a hot water heater may be set in a woodshed 
or other addition to a house, and waste heat may be used to 
heat the room. 

Heating equipment is so well standardized that local deal- 
ers almost anywhere can be depended on to install a satis- 
factory system. 

The cost of a heating system will vary from $125 for a 
small house heated by hot air, to $300 for a large house heated 
by hot water. 

WATER SUPPLY. 

The addition of an efficient system of water supply to the 
farm equipment brings two distinct values. 1st — the saving 
of time and strength from doing by machinery the hard work 
which formerly had to be done by hand. It will pay every 
farmer and his wife to take careful note for a week of the 
time and strength spent on pumping and carrying water, and 
measure the value of this time and strength if applied in other 
ways, including work, rest, reading, and planning. 2nd — the 
new avenues it opens for health, comfort, and efficiency, in- 
cluding a plumbing system, the sprinkling of lawns and gar- 
dens, the washing of floors, vehicles, implements, and live 
stock, the prevention of fires, the proper watering of live stock. 

With good equipment water can be delivered anywhere 
on the farm at a cost of 3 cents per thousand gallons with 
gasoline at 18 cents per gallon. The cost of a first class pneu- 
matic water supply system, driven by gasoline engine, will 

30 



vary from $200 to $400 according to size of farm, number of 
people, amount of live stock, and other factors. 



WATER FOR STOCK. 

The value of having an abundant supply of water stored 
under pressure in an air tight sanitary tank cannot be over- 
estimated. A large open tank or trough is dangerously un- 
sanitary because the water is liable to be contaminated 
through the air, through diseased stock, and through the pol- 
lution of the well from the mud holes which always sur- 
round such tanks. Compare even the best type of stock tank 
with a number of small metal troughs or drinking bowls dis- 
tributed at convenient points around the yards and buildings, 
and supplied automatically with pure, fresh water while the 
animals drink. The well may be located away from the barn- 
yard where there is no danger of polluting the water. The 
cost of equipment is small and the gain in efihciency great. 
A few hundred feet of pipe will bring the water to every 
point where it is wanted and save time and money every day 
in the year for a generation. Here again it is not only time and 
work that are saved. Cattle will not drink the amount of 
water required for their best development or the greatest 
milk production unless the water is near them when they want 
it, and always of a moderate temperature, cooling in summer, 
and warming in winter. This item alone can be counted on 
to pay a cash dividend of $60 per year from increased pro- 
duction of beef or milk. 

To keep barn and hog house floors clean and sanitary re- 
quires flushing with water under pressure. A few germs of 
tuberculosis or hog cholera, left to incubate in cracks and 
corners, may easily make $60 look very small. Hogs should 
not be compelled to wallow in filth. A concrete hog wallow 
IS of no use unless it is kept sanitary by an abundant supply 
of clean water. Two cents worth of clean bath water per day 
will help pay dividends in pork. 

Mud and manure should not be allowed to dry on horses 
and cattle. To keep them clean requires a hose connection 
at convenient points. If time, clean milk, and healthy live 
stock, are worth anything, a little cash dividend can be figured 
for the handy hose connection. 

31 



ARTIFICIAL RAIN. 

Irrigation in the region of slack rainfall as the basis of 
general farming is a specialty and requires a special type of 
machinery, but there isn't a farm, or even a country home, in 
the United States, where limited irrigation for a garden would 
not pay. There are few seasons in which gardens are not de- 
layed in starting or cut short in growth by drought. A few 
dry weeks in early summer frequently put the garden out 
of commission for the balance of the season. The expense of 
installing the underground or overhead pipes for supplying 
''artificial rain" over a home garden is very small, and one 
sprinkling at a critical time would frequently pay the whole 
expense. With a shower available every evening, and with 
the surplus time and vitality saved by good equipment, any 
farm family could save $60 in groceries and in the sale of 
extra garden produce, and this figure might be multiplied 
many times, for yields would be greatly increased and could 
be counted on every day throughout the growing season, and 
there is a health value as well as a cash value in eating green 
things from the garden. 

Pigs, lambs, and calves are apt to be permanently stunt- 
ed by lack of green feed. It will pay any farmer to have a 
small plot of ground under sprinkler where he can be sure of 
a pasture of rape or some other green forage crop in spite of 
drought, and keep his young stock growing. Here again is 
a reasonable assurance of another $60 cash dividend. 

In selecting a water supply plant, provision should be 
made for artificial rain and the machinery should be built to 
carry a good pressure and produce a fine spray so that the 
water will work into the soil gradually and not puddle the 
surface and cause it to bake in the sunshine. 



SELECTING A WATER SUPPLY PLANT. 

There are individual cases scattered all over the country 
where a farm water supply can be obtained from streams or 
ponds at a higher level, from flowing streams by rams or 
water wheels, or from flowing wells, but these cases are so 
rare compared with the total number of farms that they may 
be neglected in laying down general rules. 

The vast majority of farmers must pump water from 
wells with a pump driven by a gasoline engine or electric 

32 



motor, and must choose between an elevated tank system, a 
pneumatic tank system, and a non-storage system. 

The best way to approach the selection of a water sup- 
ply plant is not through the talk of rival salesman, but by 
considering the points which an ideal water supply system 
should have. 

The following are suggested as the really important 
points : 

First — It should be of such quality and size that it would 
be ready to respond to the maximum demand every minute 
of the year. 

Second — It should not disfigure the landscape or be ex- 
posed to extremes of temperature or the action of the ele- 
ments. 

Third — It should be so located that it will not be a 
menace to life and property in case of accident. 

Fourth — It should be practically indestructible and free 
from delicate parts. 

Fifth — It should be absolutely tight, so that no dust, dis- 
ease germs, or other foreign substance can get into it. 

Sixth — It should keep the water aerated so that it will 
not become foul or stagnant. 

Seventh — It should have sufficient storage and high 
enough pressure for fire protection. 

Eighth — It should be compact and simple, easy to install 
and easy to operate. 

Ninth — It should be quiet in operation. 

Tenth — It should be efficient and low in operating cost. 

A high grade pneumatic system of water supply fully 
meets these requirements. If the best type of machinery is 
selected there is small room for improvement. 



PLUMBING. 

Plumbing is a prosaic word, and yet our language is too 
poor in adjectives to give it proper praise. It is the basis of 
healthful living. The outside privy is a great menace to 
health. It is inherently dangerous. Pollution of well water 
and infection from flies are always probable. The use oi 
earth closets, chemical closets, and the screening of buildings 
is only a partial protection with the best of care, and the 
best of care is unusual. Dishwater and slops thrown on the 

33 



ground attract flies and furnish a breeding place for disease 
germs. 

Personal hygiene demands that people be clean inside as 
well as outside. The inconvenience of going to an outside 
privy, and the dread of exposure in cold weather are fruitful 
causes of disease through the absorption of poisons, and the 
exposure itself is a shock to the system which not only in- 
vites pneumonia and kindred diseases, but lowers the vitality 
which protects from disease of all kinds. The interest charge 
for plumbing and sewage disposal is about $15. It can be 
depended on to save this in doctor's bills in addition to in- 
creasing the earning capacity of the family an indefinite 
amount. 

Not only is plumbing healthful, sanitary, convenient, it 
is a mental and moral stimulus. It borders on romance and 
religion. Cleanliness is next to Godliness. A clean bathroom 
is the best physical expression of cleanliness. It sets a con- 
stant mark to live up to. 

It is no argument against the necessity of plumbing on 
the farm that few farm families appreciate its value. Plumb- 
ing is an acquired taste. It is one of the latest refinements of 
civilization, but it is a real necessity, not a useless luxury. 
People who have never lived with a modern sanitary bath- 
room look on one as a degenerate luxury. People who have 
lived with one, always begin with the bathroom when they 
plan a new house. 

Every farmhouse should have a bathroom with clean 
white walls and fixtures, and a clean white sink in the kitchen. 
The price of fixtures brings them within the reach of any 
man who can buy a farm or build a house. The pipe work 
should be done by a good plumber. It is no work for a bungler 
or an amateur. The cost should vary between $150 and $200 
according to the type of fixtures and amount of pipe work. 

SEWAGE DISPOSAL. 

Plumbing on the farm requires a system of sewage dis- 
posal as well as of water supply. Discharge of sewage over 
the surface of the ground, and even into a stream or lake 
is always dangerous. It should be prohibited by law and fre- 
quently is. 

A cesspool collects sewage, it does not reduce and purify 
it. It is more liable to pollute w^ells than a privy vault, as the 

34 



large amount of water soaks off into the soil to great dis- 
tances carrying filth and disease germs with it. 

Fortunately modern science and invention have de- 
veloped a sanitary system of sewage disposal by means of 
bacteria, which is all but perfect in operation, is easy of con- 
struction, low of cost, and requires practically no attention. 

Unfortunately, the idea of sewage disposal by means of 
bacteria caught the fancy of newspaper and magazine writers, 
who have greatly misrepresented the results obtained and the 
equipment required. 

This free advertising has enabled ignorant and unscrupu- 
lous people to claim that when sewage is run into one side 
of a steel tank, stone jug, barrel, box, or concrete pit, an equal 
amount of pure water is discharged from the other side, and 
an analysis by a chemist is frequently offered to prove it. No 
detailed explanation of the process is offered, and where 
material is offered for sale, it is strongly intimated that the 
bacteria required will work only for the seller of the material. 
This secrecy is due to the fact that if the buyer only under- 
stood the process he would know enough not to buy the 
material offered. 

Not only is the equipment offered for sale misleading, 
but the information on the subject is also. A study of the 
catalogues of dealers and engineers, articles written for 
magazines and farm papers, and bulletines issued by colleges, 
universities and departments of agriculture, shows such a 
wide difference of design that it is evident that the authors 
either have different ideas as to what the process is, or very 
poor judgment in designing suitable equipment. 

The principle involved in a bacterial sewage disposal 
plant is very simple. Certain bacteria, called anaerobes be- 
cause they thrive only when kept out of contact with air, have 
the power to reduce vegetable and animal solids to liquids 
and gases. Certain other bacteria, called aerobes because they 
thrive only when kept in contact with air, have the power to 
purify this liquid product produced by the anaerobes, by oxy- 
dizing it and reducing it to pure water and harmless gases. 

The bacteria necessary for this work exist everywhere, 
and all that is necessary is to provide the best conditions for 
them to live and multiply. Without going into details it may 
be stated that a study of the best books on the subject, of 
successful and unsuccessful plants, and of patents and the 
expert testimony in patent suits, where the object is to bring 

35 



out and not to conceal information, lead to the following con- 
clusions : 

A farm sewage disposal plant should consist of — 

1st — a concrete liquefying tank containing approximately 
24 hours' supply of sewage, in which the depth of sewage is 
maintained at not less than four feet, and from which the 
sewage overflows into 

2nd — a smaller concrete syphon tank in which, whenever 
the liquefied sewage collects to a depth of about 18 inches, it 
is discharged by an automatic syphon into 

3rd — a tile disposal field consisting of a main line of sewer 
pipe laid with cemented joints, and of branch lines of drain 
tile laid within a foot of the surface of the ground, the capac- 
ity of the branch lines of tile being greater than the dis- 
charge from the syphon tank. 

The cost of such a system will be approximately $100. 
The interest charge is $6.00, expense and depreciation noth- 
ing, if properly designed and constructed. 

ELECTRIC LIGHTING. 

Most farms are out of reach of the electric light wires and 
must use kerosene lamps or install a gas plant or electric 
lighting plant. Electric light is universally conceded to be 
superior to any other method of artificial lighting. It is the 
safest, requiring no matches and having no flame. It is the 
most healthful, taking no oxygen from the air and giving ofif 
no products of combustion to pollute the air. It is the clean- 
est, producing no soot and making no air currents which de- 
posit dust on walls and ceilings. It is the easiest to install, 
as wires can be run almost anyw^here, in old buildings as well 
as new. It is the handiest, as lights can be located out of 
reach and switches placed wherever most convenient. 

Electric power also stands in a class by itself. Motor 
driven machines need not be grouped around the source of 
power but can be installed wherever a wire can be run. The 
smaller machines can be made portable and "plugged in" 
anywhere on the line. For driving fans, sewing machines, 
portable vacuum cleaning machines, the electric motor is 
practically the only suitable power. 

Electric flatirons, toasters, chafing dishes, shaving mugs, 
curling iron heaters, and other small heating devices, are fast 
becoming household necessities. 

36 



By doing away with the use of matches, candles, lanterns, 
and oil or gas lamps, the electric current provides what is bet- 
ter than an insurance policy or a fire extinguisher — a preven- 
tion of fires. 

The kerosene lamp is unhandy. Filling and cleaning 
take time and strength. It consumes the oxygen in the air 
and throws off so much heat that it is neither comfortable nor 
healthful' to sit by it. The New York State Health Depart- 
ment reports that 5 per cent of city children and almost 22 
per cent of country children have defective vision, and this 
is laid to the poor lighting of country homes by kerosene 
lamps. When defective eyesight is thrown into the balance 
the kerosene lamp becomes more expensive investment than 
an electric lighting plant. 

Until very recently the use of electricity has been a city 
luxury. The development of the gasoline engine and storage 
battery made the service of the isolated plant equal to that 
supplied by the central station. The Tungsten lamp with its 
low current consumption, reducing the capacity of battery and 
size of engine and generator required, and the use of low 
voltage lamps, reducing the number of cells of storage bat- 
tery required, have brought the price of the plant within 
reach of the average owner of a farm or country home. 

The market is flooded with all sorts of experiments in the 
line of electric lighting plants for which the farmer is footing 
the bill. In selecting a plant the following facts should be 
considered : 

Any switchboard can be wired so that the generator can 
be used as a motor to start the gasoline engine. It is not ad- 
visable to do this, however, because it puts a heavy jolt on the 
battery and is more liable to damage it than a year of ordi- 
nary service. A small gasoline engine starts so easily by hand 
that it takes little more effort than throwing on a switch, and 
it is good practice to turn the engine over by hand occasion- 
ally to see that the compression is good and that all parts are 
working freely. In electric automobile starters the motor is 
wired to protect itself and the battery, but this is done at the 
expense of generator efliciency. A generator, if designed for 
efficient electric lighting, is not so wired and should not be 
so used just because it will generally stand the punishment. 

The automatic electric starting of a gasoline engine, when 
the supply of current in the battery is reduced, is an ingen- 
ious stunt which multiplies the chances of trouble by many 

37 



hundreds. It is a talking point only. A storage battery does 
not thrive on frequent charging and discharging, and should 
be large enough to hold at least two or three day's average 
supply of electricity. Every gasoline engine should be looked 
over at least once every day that it runs, so the automatic 
starting feature is not only a useless but a dangerous com- 
plication as it encourages neglect of the care and inspection 
which is an absolute essential of good service. Constant serv- 
ice should be secured by the size of the battery and not by 
the frequent starting and stopping of the engine. 

A plant of this type which starts every time the lights 
are turned on without depending on current storage in the 
battery has reached the height of folly. 

The cash return from an electric light plant, and the sav- 
ing in time and labor and health are not as direct as is the 
case with plumbing, heating, and water supply, so the elec- 
tric plant is not listed as necessary equipment. The advan- 
tages, however, are so great that it should be installed when- 
ever possible. The average cost of adding the electric plant 
to the water supply plant will vary between $300 and $400, 
including wiring of all buildings and fixtures. The interest 
charge will be from $18 to $24 per year. It is worth that as 
fire prevention only. 

GAS. 

Gas has one argument over electric lighting. It can be 
used for fuel as well as light. But a gas stove is little bet- 
ter than a gasoline or kerosene stove, and electric light is 
superior to gas in every way. Before the invention of the 
modern low voltage storage battery electric plants, acetylene 
or gasoline gas plants filled a great need very acceptably. 
Now, however, it is no exaggeration to say that progress has 
left them behind. 

FARM POWER PLANTS. 

The laying out of a plan for the efficient use of power 
on the farm is in some ways more complex than the planning 
of a city power plant. City plants are more standardized, 
large machinery has commanded a higher type of skill in de- 
sign and manufacture, and the employment of a consulting 
engineer is now almost universal. The plants are run by 
skilled mechanics. Duplicate machinery is usually available 

38 



if anything goes wrong. All these things insure the city 
home high-grade, continuous service. On the farm the neces- 
sity of high-grade, continuous service is much greater than in 
town. The work is harder and more necessary. There are no 
hotels, restaurants, laundries, stores, or even near neighbors 
to fall back on. The loss of service is not all. The time for 
hunting up trouble and making repairs, cuts into the neces- 
sary work on the farm. It is more than the loss of the time — 
it is a loss also of the other things which should be done in the 
time. These are days of farming with brains. Success comes 
with intelligent planning and swift and efficient execution. 
Loss of time in tinkering up podv machinery, or in doing 
the work which good machinery would be doing constantly 
is wasting dollars and saving pennies. 

PLANNING IN ADVANCE. 

In figuring on mechanical equipment for the farm, the 
house power plant should come first because living comes 
before making a living. The barn or shop plant comes next, 
with pump, wood saw, feed grinder, emery wheel, grindstone, 
drill press. Sometimes one plant will take care of both house 
and barn, sometimes two give better results, but in any case 
every farmer should have a plan covering every possible ap- 
plication of power to his present and future requirements, 
and every machine he buys should fit into the plan so that 
nothing would have to be thrown away. A manufacturing or 
public service plant which does not follow this plan "goes 
broke" or changes managers. 

When the plan is adopted it should not be handicapped 
by including inefficient machinery, or the inefficient arrange- 
ment or location of equipment and buildings acquired before 
the plan was adopted. 

The location of the well is frequently the greatest stum- 
bling-block in getting the most efficient arrangement of a 
farm power plant. Most farm wells are located in, or near, 
the barnyards for direct delivery of water to troughs or tanks 
for stock watering. As a matter of health of man and beast, 
it is dangerous to have wells located close to the barnyards, 
but this is almost necessary when there is no system of storage 
and distribution of water through pipes. 

Aside from the danger of polluted water, the location of 
such wells is seldom suitable for a power plant, and the farm- 
er who clings to a well which is poorly located destroys in 

39 



advance the possibility of getting an efficient plant, and lays 
up trouble and expense for his whole future. 

There are two common methods of sidestepping the de- 
mand for a new well properly located, one is the placing over 
the well of a cheap pumping engine, which has no relation to 
the farm power plant and is subject to neglect and exposure, 
which insure poor service and a short life; and the other is 
the attempt to get water out of a well, located at a distance 
from the power plant, by installing in the well delicate de- 
vices to be operated from the distant plant. Where the level 
of the water is within suction distance of the pump 
(about 20 feet) a suction pipe can be run underground from 
the pump to the well, but where the water level is too low 
for a suction pump, and the well is poorly located for a power 
plant, it is good economy to put down a new well at a point 
where the power plant will be most convenient and the well 
best protected from surface water from barnyards or other 
sources of pollution. 



PLANS FOR FARM POWER PLANTS. 

1 — Every farm should have a plan for a power plant, a 
"mechanical lay-out," to provide for every operation which 
can be done by machinery at a saving of time and strength. 

2 — This plan should cover present requirements and a 
long look into the future, and a drawing, or blueprint, should 
be made showing the presei>t and future position of each 
machine. 

3 — The power should be divided and the different ma- 
chines grouped around each engine or motor to give the 
greatest convenience and economy of operation. 

4 — It is false economy to drive a small load with a big 
engine, a big load with a small engine, or to have a machine 
or set of machines located in an inconvenient position to save 
buying an extra engine. 

5 — No regular work, such as pumping or electric light- 
ing should be done with a portable engine. 

6 — No regular work such as pumping and electric light- 
ing should be done by a cheap engine "built for farmers." 
Such work is generally done by engines of from one to four 
horse-power, and in these sizes price competition has been 

40 



so fierce that quality has frequently been cut until they are 
unfit for continuous service. 

7 — A "farm type" engine may do for occasional work 
such as filling silos, baling hay, shelling corn or sawing wood, 
but even for such service it is generally good business policy 
to pay a little more and get a "shop type" engine that will 
be a lifetime investment. 

8 — A house power plant should never have line-shafts or 
counter-shafts attached to any part of the frame of the house 
because the vibration and rumbling will be transmitted to all 
parts of the house. 

9 — The different machines to be driven should be grouped 
compactly around the engine or motor, taking up the least 
possible space and requiring no special foundations, or expert 
work in setting up or in lining up of shafts and pulleys. 

10 — Every machine should be shipped practically ready to 
be run when the crate is taken off, and should drop into the 
place reserved for it on the plan without expert work, whether 
all the machines are bought and installed together or one at 
a time. 

The farmer who has a plan of this kind can throw back 
on the manufacturer the responsibility for the proper work- 
ing of his machinery under the exact conditions shown. 



"FARM IMPLEMENTS" ARE NOT "MACHINERY" 

The use of power on the farm which has come about with 
the development of the gasoline engine, brings a sharp divid- 
ing line in what is sometimes called "farm machinery" — 
farm implements for field use, and regular power-driven ma-_ 
chinery. Farm implements have been developed by a long 
process of evolution for field conditions only. They are loose- 
jointed and flexible so that they adjust themselves to the in- 
equalities of the ground, but they hold together because they 
are slow-moving and more or less elastic, and both team and 
driver protect the implements from excessive strains. The 
total time which a farm implement is run is generally a very 
small proportion of the year. To build farm implements like 
shop machinery or engines would be folly. The weight would 
be prohibitive, the rigidity impossible, and the high quality 
of bearings unnecessary for such slow speed and short time 
use. Nevertheless farm implements are none too good,, and 

41 



the farmers waste millions of dollars each year by buying the 
cheapest thing in sight. 

Engines on the farm, power-driven machines on the farm, 
do not fall into the "farm implement" class just because they 
go into the country. The speed, the shock, the stress, and the 
strain are the same as in factory equipment, and they work 
every day in the year, or at least they should. There is plenty 
that they should do, that is now done by hand, to keep them 
busy. 

WHAT A GAS ENGINE HAS TO STAND. 

In a 2 H. P. gasoline engine, with 4"x5" cylinder, run- 
ning 500 revolutions per minute, the piston travels 416 feet 
per minute, almost five miles per hour. Every point on the 
crank pin wears on its bushings 196 feet per minute, or almost 
two and a quarter miles per hour. While running at these 
speeds, at full load, the piston is hit ten thousand blows of 
4400 pounds each hour, and these are taken on the crank pin 
at a pressure of 1670 pounds per square inch. To stand up 
under this kind of wear and hammering requires the finest of 
material, the smoothest of finish, and the most accurate ad- 
justment. An engine "built for farmers," in the farm imple- 
ment atmostphere, on a manure spreader type of construction, 
and thrown together and sold at a slight advance over the 
price of the raw material, will not stand up to its work. If 
the lathes, planers, drill presses, shapers, and milling ma- 
chines, on which these engines are manufactured were built 
like the engines, the whole shop would be "scrapped" in six 
months and new machinery required. Such equipment and 
methods would bankrupt any business except farming. 

A DANGER IN RURAL CREDITS. 

The chief trouble with the farmer has been less his lack 
of money than his lack of judgment in buying, and especially 
in a systematic plan of buying. Few farmers have enough 
mechanical knowledge to be good judges of machinery and 
any system of extending rural credits will open up a big field 
for loss unless accompanied by intelligent and systematic 
buying of farm equipment. 

As a matter of fact there has been very little engineering 
and very little conscience in the way the growing demand 
of the farmer for better and more efficient living equipment 

42 



has been met. Twenty years ago villages and cities were put- 
ting in public utility plants of the same general type as those 
now sold to farmers for private plants. They all had to be 
paid for and then thrown away and a higher type of equip- 
ment substituted. A man living in a city may have a ten- 
thousandth part of a public utility plant at his service. If he 
lives in the country he should have just exactly as good serv- 
ice from a '^private utility plant" one ten-thousandth as large, 
but this service cannot be had if the quality of machinery is 
reduced with the size. In fact, the small plant requires bet- 
ter quality because it will have less expert care. 

BUYING DREAMS. 

It is not only in judging quality and value that the farm- 
er falls down in buying equipment, he is always buying me- 
chanical impossibilities. If he saw a "new type of horses" 
advertised that would do twice as much work and eat half as 
much feed as other breds, that would feed and harness them- 
selves and require no care and attention, he would say as the 
old backwoods-man did when he saw the girafife, ''Maria, 
there ain't no sech an animal." But the farmer is continually 
getting stung on mechanical equipment for which the claims 
are just as ridiculous, because he doesn't know "there ain't 
no sech a machine." 

It is unfortunate that government and state bulletins still 
advocate cheap temporary makeshifts in the sanitary and me- 
chanical equipment of the farm, and that much of the adver- 
tising to farmers is so misleading as to be practically fraudu- 
lent. 

In the Bulletin of the U. S. Department of Agriculture on 
the Domestic Needs of Farm Women, we read, "Many women 
complain of having been induced to purchase worthless ap- 
paratus, while others assert that although their husbands 
cannot be persuaded to risk any money in new inv^entions, 
this attitude would be different toward those which were 
stamped with Government approval. Writers who realize the 
obstacles in the way of the Government's standing sponsor 
for articles manufactured by private concerns ask for an ex- 
planation of the general principles involved which might guide 
them in buying." 

The extension of rural credits by one system or another 
has been endorsed by all the political parties and is sure to 

43 



become a settled policy of government. This interferes with 
the banker's business. There are pure seed laws and there 
are government experts who will brand with their stamp of 
quality and stand sponsor for seeds furnished by one dealer 
and condemn the seeds furnished by another as lower in qual- 
ity and unfit for use. This interferes with the seedsman's 
business. 

But there are "obstacles in the way of the government's 
standing sponsor for articles manufactured by private con- 
cerns." What are they? Political? There are laws of m'e- 
chanics as well as of alfalfa seed. Why not tell the farmer 
the truth in this department no matter who gets hit? 

It is good policy for the farmer to let "new inventions" 
alone and let someone else do the experimenting. Revolu- 
tionary inventions in the mechanical world will not be offered 
to farmers first. Types of machinery which have not estab- 
lished themselves in the mechanical world should not be tried 
out on the farm. 

GETTING SOMETHING FOR NOTHING. 

A "guide for buying" for the farmer should begin with 
the following sage advice from Mr. Dooley, "Whiniver anny- 
body offers to give you somethin' f'r nawthin', or somethin' 
f'r less than it's worth, or more f'r somethin' than it's worth, 
don't take any chances. Yell f'r a pelisman." 

Farmers have recently learned that attaching a gasoline 
engine to a buggy doesn't make an automobile, at least not 
the kind they want to buy, but they spent a great deal of 
tnoney learning the lesson. They have still to learn the same 
lesson in regard to power equipment for the farm. • 

EXPERT JUDGING. 

The farmer is not to blame because he is not a judge of 
machinery any more than the mechanical engineer is that 
he is not a judge of live stock, but think how the farmers 
would laugh if a mechanical engineer should buy his stock on 
the same basis that they buy their power equipment. Sup- 
pose he ordered shotes by mail, "sight unseen," because they 
were valued at $15.00 each, but were priced at $4.98, suppose 
he went to town and picked up all the cows he could find for 
sale cheap. Suppose he bought spider-legged, raw-boned, 
stifif-jointed, sway-backed horses, blind, spavined, ring-boned, 

44 



and sweenied, without finding out what good horses looked 
like or acted like, under the impression that a horse was a 
horse. Wouldn't the farmers laugh? Wouldn't they think he 
was a "jay" not to get expert advice if he didn't know any- 
thing about live stock himself, or at least buy from someone 
whose standard of values was high enough so that he wouldn't 
deal in scrub stock? The farmer would take it as an insult 
to his intelligence to be ofifered this kind of live stock. The 
mechanical engineer would take it as an insult to his intelli- 
gence to be offered the kind of machinery and equipment that 
is ''built for farmers." 

There are live stock breeders who care more for the qual- 
ity of their stock than they do for the money it brings. They 
breed quality stuff and get a quality price. Both buyer and 
seller get a fair and honest value. There are live stock breed- 
ers and dealers who impose on the buyer and sell defective 
or poor quality stock at a quality price. There are stock rais- 
ers and dealers who sell scrub stuff at a scrub price and who 
make no effort to breed up to any standard at all. They 
breed what they happen to and get what they can. 

What the farmer needs to understand is that there are 
the same classes of' men in the machinery ..line, and that there 
is scrub machinery and grade machinery and pure bred ma- 
chinery, and that each has its price, cost and value. 

PRICE is what you pay for a thing when you get it. 
You pay it once. 

COST is what you have paid for a thing when you are 
done with it. It includes original price, running expense, re- 
pairs, depreciation, trouble, loss of time, loss of service. 

VALUE is what you get out of a thing while you have 
it. It is measured by economy of operation, freedom from 
repairs and trouble, constant service and length of life. 

High price does not necessarily mean big value, but 
when low price is put forward as the main selling argument, 
it is a safe bet that the value is low and the final cost will be 
high. 

The lowest cost and highest value never go together. 
Good material and good finish cost more than poor material 
and poor finish, and in any machine that gets regular use, 
good material and good finish pay back far more than their 
extra cost. 

Improved processes of manufacture may reduce cost, and 
where the reduction in price is due to this factor, the higher 

45 



priced machine will be driven from the market in time. But 
the same shop processes and equiprnxcnt are open to all man- 
ufacturers, and where a higher priced machine holds a place 
on the market against a lower one it is a safe bet that it is 
because the intelligent buyers are not all dead, and that the 
cheaper machine actually costs more and gives poorer serv- 
ice. There are 1 H. P. gasoline engines on the market that 
sell for $70 and hold a market against engines selling all the 
way down to $30. The ignorant man who goes on his own 
knowledge, never buys the higher priced engine. From his 
point of view it would be throwing away money. The man 
who knows machinery pays the higher price because he 
knows he will more than get it back in economy of opera- 
tion, freedom from repairs and trouble, constant service, and 
length of life. The man who does not know machinery can 
at least know that there is reason back of the choice of the 
man who does, and follow him. And he doesn't even need to 
know the other man. The existence of the higher priced ma- 
chine on the market in face of competition with cheaper ma- 
chines shows that the other man exists and is continually 
making his judgments. This argument applies only to time- 
tried types of machinery like gasoline engines and the stand- 
ard deep well and suction pumps which have established their 
fitness to survive in the long course of mechanical evolution. 
That a new invention or a non-competitive article sells for a 
high price means nothing. To have the price mean anything 
to the man who is not a judge of values, it must have held 
its own against competition. 

A GUIDE TO BUYING. 

To obtain ideas which should guide him in the purchase 
of a water supply or electric lighting plant, the farmer should 
go into a good public service plant and examine the type of 
equipment which would be placed at his service if he lived 
in town. He should notice the compact design, the careful 
machining and finish, the smooth, quiet running. He should 
talk to the engineer on the relation between high quality and 
economy of operation, freedom from trouble, and expense 
for upkeep and repairs. 

All catalogues, salesmen and agents will give him qual- 
ity talk. Probably his own knowledge of machinery will not 
enable him to tell how much of this talk is true. Quite likely 

46 



the manufacturer or agent has too little mechanical judg- 
ment to know himself. The farmer's best protection will be 
to make a mental picture of the machinery he saw in the pub- 
lic utilities plant, reduce it to 1-1000 or to 1-10,000 of its actual 
size, and see if the machinery he is considering buying falls 
into the same class. 

The laws of mechanics, of the resistance of materials, of 
friction, of light, heat, and power are the same in the coun- 
try as in the city. The same type of machinery that is re- 
quired for dependable service in a manufacturing or public 
service planet is required for dependable service anywhere. To 
be dependable machinery must not only be good in itself ; it 
must make a dependab\e combination with the man or woman 
who runs it, and this dependability is due not only to qual- 
ity, but to a simplicity of design and construction, which 
makes the machinery easily understood by unskilled people, 
so that they can give it intelligent care. There is no substi- 
tute for good care and intelligent understanding. This apr 
plies to machinery as well as to children and live stock. Who- 
ever buys complex or delicate automatic devices with the ex- 
pectation of escaping this natural law, buys trouble and loss. 

WORKING WITHOUT TOOLS. 

The greatest fallacy in the farm world today is the idea 
that good living equipment for the farmer, instead of being 
the basis of efficient living during his active life, should be a 
reward in his old age after a lifetime of effort, shortened and 
handicapped for the lack of it. We are so used to this that 
we do not see its economic waste, its pathos, its tragedy, its 
grim humor. Think of it — living wastefully the best part of 
your life, and when you find you can't stand it much longer, 
getting living equipment to die among. "Some die too late 
and some too soon," and the vast majority of farmers die too 
soon for the achievement of even this belated ambition. Sup- 
pose the manufacturer should try to make his product first 
and equip his shop afterward. Suppose the skilled workman 
should dig in the ditch to earn money to buy tools rather 
than borrow the money to buy tools and pay his debt out of 
his higher wages. It would be no more ridiculous or waste- 
ful. The foundation of American industry is spending money 
before making it, getting the best equipment no matter what 
it costs, even throwing away good machinery to get the best. 



American farming has lagged behind American industry 
because it has not learned this lesson. A farmer's home is 
more than a shelter ; it is the most important tool used in his 
business. Manufacturers are learning that there is value, 
not only in good equipment, but in healthful surroundings in 
shop and home, in short hours and reduced fatigue, for their 
employes. The only reason they have not learned this more 
quickly and more thoroughly is that they have been allowed 
to throw away worn out workers instead of keeping them in 
repair as they do their machinery. If the farmer does this he 
wears out and throws away his wife and children. And some 
of them do it. 

FARMING AS A BUSINESS. 

In the industrial field the development of machinery has 
put a premium on the skill, brains, and independence of the 
few at the expense of the many. The employer is constantly 
striving to obtain machinery which will enable him to em- 
ploy a lower and less skilled class of labor. The saving in 
time and efficiency goes to the employer, not to the man who 
operates the machine. 

On the farm it is different. The farmer is both employer 
and employe. The efficient use of machinery gives him time 
to develop his own skill, brains, and independence for his own 
benefit. The more efficient machinery he has, the less he is 
dependent on unskilled labor. He does not have to use ma- 
chinery to make himself so rich that he and his wife can hire 
servants. He can use it to make himself and his wife so 
efficient that his family is a self-supporting unit. 

A farm power plant should not be a rough toy for the 
farmer to monkey and tinker with ; it should be of the best 
and most dependable type for continuous service like a public 
service power plant. The farmer should rise every morning 
with the certainty that his power plant will do its full assign- 
ment of work and leave him free to attend to his own without 
wasting his time and strength on the work which he power 
plant should do, or in fixing up defective or balky machinery. 
A dependable power plant, good for a lifetime of steady serv- 
ice with the labor saving and good living equipment which 
it makes possible, goes far toward taking the element of chance 
out of farming and making it a regularly prosperous busi- 
ness. 

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